Seven Roma women were eagerly awaiting Queen Letizia’s visit to the Fundación Secretariado Gitano (FSG) this Thursday in the Vallecas district of Madrid. Accompanied by the Minister of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and the 2030 Agenda, Pablo Bustinduy, and about thirty photographers, the Queen greeted the seven representatives of the association, who smiled when she remembered all their names. Doña Letizia highlighted the foundation’s work in “promoting social inclusion rights,” and advocated for the “opening of public space” for the “more than 700,000 Roma people” who have been in Spain for over 600 years.
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The Queen emphasized three key pillars of the foundation’s role in promoting the right to access employment, training, and education. After brief remarks from Minister Pablo Bustinduy, who said he was there only “to listen,” the event began, led by Celia Gabarri, head of the Gender Equality and Roma Women Area of the FSG.
Gabarri led a discussion featuring a “diversity of profiles, experiences, and realities of Roma women today,” ranging from a warehouse worker to a programmer, including a street vendor. Among them was Luisa Muñoz, who has worked in markets since she was 13, who thanked the Queen for her concern and fondly recalled the meeting they had during the pandemic. That was not Letizia’s first encounter with the Roma community; her first meeting was in 2008, when she was still Princess of Asturias.
At the end of the event, Sara Giménez, the foundation’s director general, confessed that they had addressed all the issues that concerned them, especially “the pending challenges”: “We talked about the labor promotion of Roma women and how we work from the organization,” she noted. According to the foundation’s data, the unemployment rate among Roma women is 60%, and nearly five out of ten women have experienced discrimination in job interviews. Jiménez stressed that “the big pending issue is education and how the progress of Roma women depends on educational matters.” The school dropout rate among young Roma women is 63%, according to data presented by the entity.
At the end of the talk, the Queen took a photo with all the members of the Foundation, who gave her a commemorative plaque that read: “Thank you for walking alongside us, women bearers of history, strength, and pride,” alongside the Caló expression Latcho Drom (have a good journey).
Before leaving, the Queen also enjoyed a Roma coffee in a pot, a cultural symbol of hospitality, while two center employees performed the song Sin miedo a la libertad by Antonio Remache, considered an anthem of Roma women which, according to Celia Gabarri, “shows how Roma women raise their voices because we are not afraid and what we want is freedom.”
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